Author: Peacock Carter

Non-communicable diseases (NCDs) include heart disease, stroke, diabetes, cancer, liver disease and lung disease. In 2020, these diseases were responsible for more than 40,000 deaths in Scotland – that's 62% of all deaths.

Analysis suggests that one in five of these deaths are preventable through public health action. Reducing the consumption of health harming products, like alcohol, tobacco and unhealthy food and drink, is one of the key ways to reduce the number of lives lost to, and affected by, NCDs. 

What’s more, the consumption and availability of health harming products are often highest in our most deprived areas. We must ensure that the healthy choice is the easy choice for people in Scotland, regardless of their community.

The Scottish Government tobacco-free generation target of reducing smoking prevalence to 5% by 2034, is already estimated to be 16 years behind target. 

Urgent action is needed on tobacco, alcohol, and unhealthy food and drink.

With the commencement of the 2021/22 Parliament, ASH Scotland has come together again with nine other charities to call for urgent action. 

They are calling on the Scottish Parliament and Scottish Government to take meaningful action to reduce the impact of health harming products and to build a healthier Scotland for future generations. This report sets ASH Scotland’s priority areas for action in the first year of this Parliament.

Read ASH Scotland NCD Prevention Report

Read ASH Scotland NCD Prevention Summary Poster

It is the biggest event of its kind ever to be held in Scotland, but what does COP26 mean for you and your business? And are you in a position to make the most of it?

Zero Waste Scotland’s Energy Efficiency Business Support Service has put together informative articles and an interesting series of FREE lunchtime training webinars over the next three months to help your business take something positive from the event.

From learning how to calculate your carbon footprint so you can become more climate savvy and save money, to running staff engagement campaigns and learning from green businesses, there's something for everyone.

For full details, click here.

New legislation, which will require food businesses in Scotland to include the product name and full ingredients list, on food sold prepacked for direct sale (PPDS), comes into force on October 1st 2021, in Scotland and the rest of the UK. 

Businesses must include the name of the food and the ingredients list with any of the 14 allergens required to be declared by law emphasised within it, if they are ingredients of the food. 

Examples of PPDS foods include sandwiches placed into packaging by the food business and sold from the same premises, wrapped deli counter goods such as cheese and meats, and boxed salads placed on a refrigerated shelf prior to sale. 

What information is required? 

You must include the name of the food and the ingredients list with any of the 14 allergens required to be declared by law emphasised within it, if they are ingredients of the food. Allergens could be emphasised by:

●  Using a different text colour

 ●  Writing the allergens in bold or underlining 

How is my business affected? 

To find out how your business is affected visit the Food Standards Scotland website and answer a few questions to find out how you are affected by these changes. 

Support and guidance 

You can also find all the support and guidance you will need on the Food Standards Scotland website, along with a short video to help explain the legislation change.
To make sure you are ready for this change visit foodstandards.gov.scot/prepacked. 

The UK Treasury has announced £19.2 million funding for a UK-wide pilot scheme to adopt a ‘One Health’ approach to the surveillance of foodborne pathogens and antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

The project brings together the Food Standards Agency (FSA), Food Standards Scotland (FSS), the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), Public Health England (PHE) and the Environment Agency to test the application of genomic technologies in the surveillance of foodborne pathogens and antimicrobial resistant (AMR) microbes in all four nations of the UK.

The three-year programme, ‘Pathogen Surveillance in Agriculture, Food and the Environment (PATH-SAFE)’ aims to establish the infrastructure and sampling frameworks which are needed to monitor the source and spread of foodborne pathogens and AMR genes between the environment, animals, food and human populations.

The funding is part of the UK Government’s Shared Outcomes Fund (SOF) which tests innovative ways of bringing together the public sector. It aims to address cross-cutting issues in a way that improves outcomes and ensures value for money.

Food Standards Scotland’s Chief Scientific Adviser, Professor David Gally, said: “The funding will allow the UK to build on its expertise in whole genome sequencing of infectious diseases to improve our knowledge of the origins and threats posed by pathogens and AMR in our environments and the food chain, and help us to target control strategies for protecting public health.”

The investment will support the project to develop a pilot national surveillance network, using the latest DNA-sequencing technology and environmental sampling to improve the detection and tracking of foodborne and antimicrobial resistant pathogens through the whole agri-food system from ‘farm to fork’.

At the heart of this ‘virtual’ network will be a new database that will permit the analysis, storage and sharing of pathogen sequence and source data, collected from multiple locations across the UK by both government and public organisations.

Professor Robin May, Chief Scientific Adviser for the FSA said: 

“Foodborne disease in the UK is estimated to cause around 2.4 million cases of illness a year.  The cost of this burden on society is estimated at over £9bn per year. This project is designed to help safeguard UK food, agriculture and consumers by using cutting edge technology to understand how pathogens and AMR spread. Tracking the source of these issues will ultimately help us to develop better control strategies to reduce illness and deaths.”

Professor Gideon Henderson, Chief Scientific Adviser for Defra said:

“Antimicrobial resistance poses a major risk to public health and the loss of functional antibiotics has the potential to cause 10 million additional global deaths every year by 2050. To put this in context the current pandemic has so far caused around three million deaths globally.

“UK sales of antibiotics for food-producing animals have halved in the last six years.  This vital new project will build on that progress, and ensure antibiotics continue to remain effective for both people and animals.”

Dame Sally Davies, UK Special Envoy on AMR, said: 

“AMR is a silent pandemic that already poses a serious threat to modern medicine and our planet, by making common infections even more difficult to treat in both humans and animals.   To tackle this global threat, we need to make better use of our technological advances, and strengthen our ability to collect, analyse, and share health data from all aspects of life.

“Building on the progress made at the G7 meetings this year, this new project will help us identify how pathogens and AMR spread, through analysing food, environment and health factors.  Through this joined-up approach we will be able to take decisive action to save thousands of lives every year.”

Professor Doug Wilson, Chief Scientist for the Environment Agency, said:

“This project will help us to understand the complex role that the environment plays in the development, maintenance and transport of resistance leading to the exposure of people, animals and crops. We can finally begin to add environmental knowledge to build a true “One Health” approach to AMR.”

Dr Neil Woodford, Deputy Director, National Infection Service for PHE said:

“Working across industries and taking a “One Health” approach is a critical part of our approach to better understand and track antibiotic resistance and ensure that we can keep antibiotics working. Our ongoing and established surveillance work of antibiotic resistance in samples from patients with gastrointestinal infections will form an important part of this joint initiative and help ensure that information is shared across the system.” 

Gas Safety Week (GSW) 2021 is to take place 13-19 September. Coordinated by Gas Safe Register, is the gas industry’s eleventh annual awareness event.

Businesses are encouraged to show their support, by completing the pledge form on the GSW website. In return they will receive a free toolkit which contains digital materials designed to help them support the week, including:

• pre-planned social media updates and images
• articles for websites
• web banners
• logos and images of the Gas Safety Week Safety Squad

For further information on the week, you can follow @GasSafetyWeek on Twitter, and if you’d like to share your supportive activities after the week, you can email the details.

HSE also has plenty of guidance for employers and workers on their gas safety website.

Under One Roof, with generous support from the SafeDeposits Scotland Charitable Trust, is again hosting a series of webinars in 2021-22 to give landlords and letting agents in Scotland interactive, free, and independent information they can use to address the issues faced in managing tenement flats.

The twice-monthly, one-hour sessions will feature specific topics and general sessions related to tenement flat management, such as organising common repairs in a tenement block, and making repairs or improvements to a specific flat.

The webinar sessions will again feature Under One Roof Scotland’s tenement experts Annie Flint and John Gilbert, co-authors of The Tenement Handbook and primary contributors of the underoneroof.scot webpage, as well as a number of professionals from across the sector.

There are 20 sessions planned between August 2021 and May 2022 with the first taking place on Tuesday, August 24th (6-7pm) and will focus on the subject of noise reduction. Landlords and letting agents will learn about the common sources of noise problems found in tenement blocks and which standards to follow when attempting to reduce noise. They will also have the opportunity to ask questions to expert guests about issues they are facing involving noise reduction.

David Duffy, a manager with South Lanarkshire Council Environmental Health who has over 30 years of experience dealing with noise issues, will also be joining the presenter line-up and will provide a valuable problem-solving and enforcement perspective. Registration details can be found here.

The Private Landlord webinar series is part of Under One Roof’s continuing work to provide all owners of tenement flats in Scotland information on common repairs and maintenance – this includes a series of webinars next month on low-carbon tenements and energy efficiency, aimed at landlords and owner-occupiers in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen as part of Doors Open Days.

Mike Heffron, chief executive of Under One Roof, said: “Under One Roof, with the generous support of the Safe Deposits Scotland Charitable Trust, is again pleased to be able to host a series of free, independent webinars aimed at supporting landlords and letting agents in Scotland with issues related to tenements flats. Landlords who know their responsibilities and rights regarding repair and maintenance in the stair will be able to work better with other owners in the tenement block to ensure a better standard of housing for their tenants.”

John Duff, chairman of the SafeDeposits Scotland Charitable Trust, added: “Under One Roof has a strong track record of delivering informative and important guidance on handling issues relating to tenement flats, and the SafeDeposits Scotland Charitable Trust is delighted to have funded this new series of webinars. These sessions fit perfectly with one of our key aims, which is to advance education on best practice in private rented housing management.”

The number of alcohol-specific deaths has increased by 17% to 1,190 in 2020, up from 1,020 in 2019, according to statistics on deaths by various causes published today by National Records of Scotland.  

These figures show a return to the recent upward trend in the number of alcohol-specific deaths in Scotland following a decline in the previous year. This is the largest number of deaths due to alcohol recorded since 2008.

This NRS report presents mortality rates for deaths from causes known to be exclusively caused by alcohol consumption. Alcoholic liver disease and mental and behavioural disorders due to alcohol have been the leading causes of alcohol death since 2000.

Most alcohol-specific deaths were of people in their 50s and 60s, with the average age being 59.9 for men and 57.4 for women. Men are more than twice as likely as women to die from alcohol

Deaths in the most deprived areas were four times more than those in the least deprived areas.

The latest statistics for Scotland show:

·       The five-year average alcohol-specific death rate for Scotland was 20.5 deaths per 100,000 population.

·       Four health boards had death rates higher than the average: Greater Glasgow and Clyde; Lanarkshire; Western Isles and Highland.

·       The council areas with the worst rates were Inverclyde (31.6), Glasgow City (31.3) and North Lanarkshire (29.8).

·       The local authorities with the lowest death rates were Shetland (10.0), Aberdeenshire (10.3) and Scottish Borders (11.1).

·       The death rate in the most deprived areas of Scotland was 41 per 100,000 compared 10 in the least deprived 20%.

·       The increase has been driven by male deaths as there was very little change in the number for females.

Alison Douglas, chief executive of Alcohol Focus Scotland said, “Last year we saw a positive reduction in the number of deaths caused by alcohol. This sudden increase of 17% is devastating to see and a tragedy for everyone affected. It is a stark reminder that we cannot afford to take our eye off the ball where alcohol harm is concerned."

“Scotland has made good progress in addressing the problems we have with alcohol by introducing policies like minimum unit pricing which is showing promising results. Yet the impact of the pandemic threatens to undermine this progress. Many people, particularly heavier drinkers, have reported that they have increased their drinking during the last 18 months. The effects are felt most by those living in our poorest communities, who are eight times more likely to die due to alcohol. "

“If we are to prevent more people losing their lives to alcohol and to reduce health inequalities we need to redouble our efforts by reducing the availability of alcohol, restricting its marketing and by uprating minimum unit price. Importantly, we also need to make sure that support is available to those who need it now. We have recently seen a significant investment in drug treatment in response to the increasing numbers of people who are tragically losing their lives to drugs. To reduce the long-term impact of the pandemic this needs to be matched with investment in recovery-oriented alcohol services."